Dogs in the News

First off from our That Was a Really Stupid Idea files the Waseca County News reports:

A little over a week has passed since a dog was discovered inside a Dumpster on a cold Waseca night.

While Precious, a female rat-terrier
mix, is doing well at the Animal Medical Center of Waseca, her owner
faces a misdemeanor charge relating to the incident.

The dog was discovered by a Subway
employee at the bottom of a Dumpster behind the restaurant around 10:30
p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 28.

According to Police Chief Keith Hiller, Precious was intended to be in the trash bin only temporarily.

Hiller said it appeared as though there may have been an issue of having a dog in a home where pets were prohibited.

He said that the owner told police that the dog was put into the trash temporarily as a way of hiding her from the landlord.

While the owner will make her first
court appearance later this month, a number of things can happen with
Precious down the road.

She could be returned to the owner, or
someone who knows the owner and can provide a good home for her. The
other option would be to put the dog up for adoption.

Hiller said that if a pet owner is
unable to take care of their animal, there are a number of options
available to them, but abandonment is not one of them.

Uh yeah. How bright do you have to be to understand that stashing
your dog in a restaurant dumpster, even on a temporary basis, is a bad
idea?

Newsday features the story of a Vicious Pit Bull Attack — sadly, this is the story of an innocent dog attacked and killed by its owner.

A Middle Island man was arrested after
he called police and told them he stabbed the family dog to death in
self-defense Tuesday morning, Suffolk police said.

Lamont Yarborough, 36, of Wilson Ave.,
was charged with felony animal cruelty after he used a knife to stab
the 80-pound pit bull named Buster three times at his family’s home,
police said.

Around 5:13 a.m., Yarborough called 911
and told responding officers that he killed the dog after being
attacked in a bedroom, according to Det. Sgt. James Madden at a news
conference in Selden Tuesday.

Yarborough went to the kitchen for a six-inch knife and stabbed the dog
three times — once in the head, once in the groin and a fatal wound to
the left rib cage, puncturing the dog’s left lung, Madden said.

Madden called Yarborough’s response excessive, noting that he had a “superficial” scratch on one hand.

“I believe Mr. Yarborough could have
confined his dog in a room and if he thought he was a threat, he could
have called 911,” Madden said. “The results are over the top.” A woman
at Yarborough’s house declined to comment. A neighbor described hearing
the dog screaming and howling Tuesday morning.

I’m quite sure that there’s a special place in Hell for Yarborough…

Good Intentions Gone Terribly Wrong — ZooToo reports the sad story of a woman who, unfortunately, provides a graphic illustration of why you must always make sure conditions are safe before trying to rescue a loved one, whether they’re on two legs or four.

A New Jersey woman sacrificed her life
for that of her grandson’s dog on Saturday, when she fell into a frozen
pond after trying to rescue Apollo, a German Shepherd puppy.

Though the 6-month-old dog survived the
icy incident, the woman, Janet Howard, 61, drowned in the Plainsboro
Pond, in Plainsboro, N.J.

The tragic incident generated double
acts of heroism, as a Plainsboro resident witnessed Howard’s fall, and
plunged into the frigid waters after her.

The resident, Austin Hearn, told police
he was riding his bike along a nearby trail when he saw Howard and
Apollo struggling to stay afloat.

“The woman was barely keeping her head
above water and appeared to be growing weaker by the second,” the
Plaisnboro police department said in a news release. “She was separated
from the bank by a solid sheet of ice; the dog was also floundering in
the water.”

Hearn first attempted to pull Howard from the pond with a branch, veering off about 15 feet away from the water’s edge.

“It’s impossible for me to imagine
leaving someone there and abandoning her,” Hearn told NY 4 News. “My
first priority was to get her to safety. That’s why I got the branch.”

Yet the initial rescue attempt “didn’t work out,” Hearn said, after the ice caved in under him, too.

Despite his 15 years of experience as a lifeguard, Hearn recognized that the circumstances were challenging, at best.

Note: when I searched for information on emergency scene safety to
link to this story (as a former HAZMAT responder and trainer, this is
something I’ve drilled into many people’s heads) I found that more EMS
providers are injured or killed from motor vehicle collisions and
roadside incidents than from violence each year. Violence is a very
real threat to first responders – and so are drowning, being overcome
by toxic fumes, falling — and back injuries. Dying or getting severely
injured is a bad idea under any circumstances. Don’t go there.

Last, A Bit of Heart-Warming News. Dallas News writes that:

David Hartwig’s beloved dog, Skidboot, had died, but the phone kept ringing with performance requests.

Bring your other dogs and do your routine, they told him. We love it.

But Hartwig wasn’t in the mood. His new batch of Australian blue heelers were just “average dogs of average intelligence.”

Fans kept calling, however, and Hartwig
eventually caved in. Now his trio of doggies – Tiedown, Bois’d'arc and
Little Skidboot – entertain audiences in the spirit of Skidboot, who
died in 2007.

“I had to let the public convince me it was still worthy,” he said. “They said, ‘You have something, and we want it.’ “

“If you had never seen Skidboot, you’d
think this was a real smart dog,” he said, talking about one of his new
charges. “But compared to Skidboot, this dog has a bad case of
dumbworms.”

But the new dogs are talented, and audiences can’t get enough of them.

In a time when the main message behind the top-rated movie in the U.S. is that dogs are furry, lovable members of the family especially when they’re undisciplined and obnoxious – and that it’s perfectly acceptable to raise enable them in an utterly passive way; a story celebrating trained dogs and the people who love them truly warms my heart!